Born makers

We are spending a few days in Detroit before driving to New York where we will meet more church and community workers involved in regeneration work in a different urban context. Detroit is in many ways a City which suffers from similar problems as Flint, but on a macro scale.

On our way here I was struck by the new Chrysler advertising campaign on the skyscraper between the two cities, visible from the freeway. The Chrysler building says ‘We are born makers’. In many ways there is a cruel irony about this – yes we are all makers but in cities like Flint and Detroit the opportunity to make, has been taken away from many people, the people in this tower might feel like makers... but there are people who down the road are surrounded by dereliction and destruction.

Yet its also a reminder that we are all makers, that for the residents of these cities, as much as they may feel like a few big factories would solve their problems, we all have an ability to create and make for ourselves.

I came across 1 Chronicles 22:15-16, where David commissions the building of the temple for the glory of the Lord. He says, 'Moreover, there are many workmen with you, stonecutters and masons of stone and carpenters, and all men who are skillful in every kind of work. "Of the gold, the silver and the bronze and the iron there is no limit. Arise and work, and may the LORD be with you."' This is a reminder of the potential that all of us have to create with the different skills we have and to work for the good for the city and for the glory of God. We all have skills, there is so much purpose to be found, but without finding this and without the opportunity to make and create, we are robbed of something which makes us human. 

It does not feel this simple for many of the people of these cities, to just 'go and create'. We are all born makers, but we are not all born equal. For some there are creative enterprises all over Detroit, people moving from Brooklyn to set up design companies, distilleries, bakeries, potteries, printers etc. as well as social enterprises. For others, particularly some of the poorer black communities who make up the majority of these cities, this can feel way out of reach. What is clear to me is that it is sometimes not enough that we are makers, we need to help each other to realise this economically, investing in each other, working collaboratively in a way that all thrive, not only the few. We have to make real the equality that we say we believe in.

In the Detroit Institute of Art there is a mural by Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. Done in the 1930s it shows the car industry that was booming in Detroit (and indeed Flint). Rivera paints hundreds and thousands of workers, depicting the potential and the glory of hard work of people of all races, in the field as well as in the factory. But exploring the mural further, we see that Rivera also points at the way in which the few can exploit this, putting others in danger. His message not only to Detroit, but to a capitalist world, is that when the workers thrive, all thrive, but where they are exploited, all of humanity suffers. We are all born makers, the question is how happy are we with the world we are making? Is everyone free to make and create? Or just some of us? Our cities seem to magnify the creative industry, for better or worse, so what is our response when we really listen to it?

Illiteracy

The car manufacturer GM was born in Flint and employed 80000 people who moved to the town with their families and invested millions of dollars in buildings, shops and museums, many of which now lie abandoned. GM employs 7500 today. Such massive decline has lead to more than simply widespread unemployment. Those that could moved out of the city in the 70s, 80s and 90s, a movement often called the 'white flight'. The population has gone from 300,000 to under 100,000 today. Yet this move was less about race and more about education and opportunity. Those that could get a job elsewhere did, those that couldn't stayed behind.

Today we visited a project called Christ Enrichment Centre which is part of St Paul's Episcopal Church Flint (the church we attended yesterday). The centre was once an Episcopal church but as folks moved out congregants dwindled and this church was closed. Today it supports those people who have been left behind because they can't get a job elsewhere. For many of these people, they, like a third of the city's adults, are illiterate.

Part of the reason for this widespread illiteracy is that factory jobs that existed previously did not demand many of the workers to read and write. These people - black and white - cannot now work anywhere else.

Christ Enrichment Centre focuses on literacy amongst families and training people learn how to read and write. They are supported by St Paul's and other local churches, by the Episcopal church centrally and they also receive some government funding. They also have an onsite foodbank, work to support young mothers and run a summer camp for children. Today we met a 73 year old gentleman in the centre learning to write for the first time.

Urban Decay

This is way too much this video, and the music is pretty bad, but watch a few seconds, it does highlight some of the needs and the area in which we are staying.

Welcome to Flint

Over the next week we are in the town of Flint, 60 miles northwest of Detroit. You might have heard of the city from Michael Moore (from Flint himself) in his film Roger and Me. These postcards are a little reminder that in the 40s and 50s the city was booming. In the 80s the city sank into severe economic depression after years of deindustrialization. In the 2000s became known for high crime rates and ranked as amongst the most dangerous in the United States. Michigan placed the city it in a state of financial emergency in 2011. This kind of reputation never helps a city. One of the city's biggest problems seems to be not what you do see (e.g the media's urban porn style photography shoots ) but what you don't. That is the families and professionals that have left. The 'white flight' is a term used to describe large-scale migrations of white peoples from racially mixed urban inner city areas to racially homogeneous suburban or ex-urban areas. Those with money and jobs essentially have often left the city behind. Driving from Detroit airport out to Flint its clear that many of these people are still surviving and thriving, they just aren’t doing so inside the city gates.